Genesis – The Journey

Namaste!

Welcome to Vedantu 🙂

As our first blog we would like to start with our genesis – the sequence of events which lead to conceptualization and creation of this vision called ‘Vedantu’

It all started with friendship. Four friends – Anand, Saurabh, Pulkit & Vamsi – school buddies and college mates. After graduating from IIT`s (Indian Institute of Technology) we wanted to do something together. The idea was to bring about a positive change at a place where no facilities existed. Hence in 2006 we started our journey in education as teachers from a very small rural place in Punjab, Northern India. Our first venture in education was born – Lakshya (www.lakshyainstitute.com)

We never knew teaching would be so satisfying it was a life transforming experience altogether, the satisfaction of one having said/done something for a student which will change his life forever. The fact that no matter what happens a teacher will always be remembered by his student. The contribution is live in front, one can sense it by just looking into the eyes of his student.

The bliss and satisfaction every day before sleeping is something we could never forget from those years. While on our journey there were few things which we noticed

The best of the society doesn’t come back into the profession of teaching: Which was sadly hypocritical because we used to have parents saying that my child has to be taught by the best but when we used to ask whether they will allow their child to teach after their graduation, the answer was resounding no. We felt we had to change this. For a transformational change to happen in education, it has to be able to attract the best of the society into teaching. So we made it one of our missions to ‘Glorify/glamorize the profession of Teaching’

Teachers were not by Choice: There was a marked difference in quality of teachers and when we analysed we could classify all into 2 types – those who were teachers by choice and those who were not. We really made this as our motto to induct and create a pool of high quality teachers/mentors who really loved what they were doing. Who were Teachers by Choice.

Accessibility: Having started from a small place ourselves we noticed that accessibility was a huge challenge in quality education. Especially in a country like India there was a severe last mile problem.

Purpose of Teaching: We also felt from our experience that subject knowledge is secondary, what a child really wants is someone he can trust and look upto, he needs a mentor/friend. Once that relation is established, knowledge automatically flows. Also once this connection is there a teacher, apart from subject knowledge, can instil values. Which should be the true purpose of education and primary role of a good teacher. So there was a need to spread this message and create more mentors rather than subject teachers.

So gradually we scaled our venture, found like minded people who shared similar passion, but at the end we could only affect a small region. There were scalability issues. This finally lead us to rethink on our approach and we found our solution in Technology.

In 2012, after almost 7 years after starting Lakshya and scaling it to over 4 location, having 60 teachers catering to over 3000 students annually we exited our venture with a vision to start something which can touch more people and be instrumental in bringing forth a bigger change. In 2012, Lakshya got acquired by a listed educational company and we set on our next educational venture.

With our previous vision intact we wanted to use technology in education to bring forth a disruptive positive impact, to create more ‘Teachers by Choice‘, to make Quality education more accessible. And this is precisely the motto with which we have started on our new endeavor.

We went about inducting like minded individuals, who are passionate about education and see the transformational power of it. Apart from us four we were joined by some rockstar hackers who had this strong belief that education has the power to bring an evolutionary push to the human race.

This is our first blog and we wish to use this forum to thank everyone who believed in us and supported us.

We do not know what will be the outcome of our endeavors but we believe that the Journey is as important as the destination.

So here is to the start of a new Journey. We conclude with this beautiful Sanskrit Shloka dedicated to the power of a Teacher

गुरुर्ब्रह्मागुरुर्विष्णुर्गुरुर्देवोमहेश्वरः।

गुरुरेवपरंब्रह्मतस्मैश्रीगुरवेनमः॥१॥

(Gurur-Brahmaa Gurur-Vissnnur-Gururdevo Maheshvarah)

Guru (Teacher) is the creator, Guru is the preserver, Guru is the destroyer

How can I get in touch with you guys? I’ll highly appreciate if you reply back to me at my email address. BTW, I am also a Thomasonian (B. Tech. Roorkee) and have been living in the US for past 19 years. Hope to hear from one of you soon.